Her heart was thudding in a mix of anxiety and excitement, and her hands were holding tight to him—because she was literally off-balance. She could have shaken him off and stood on her own two feet rather than let him hold her tipped like this, but her brain had short-circuited again. All she was really aware of was his mouth, right there, filling her with such yearning she could hardly breathe.
She lifted her chin in welcome, offering her mouth to him.
The lightest of touches brushed her lips. A subtle rest of lips to lips. A greeting. Not even a dalliance. He waited for her to make the slight shift and find the angle that fit their mouths together more fully.
Then he rocked his head, a request. Invite me.
She did, sighing as his arm grew more firm around her and his tongue probed in a languorous quest. When the tip of his tongue brushed the roof of her mouth, feathery caresses seemed to scroll over her whole body from nape to tailbone, down her arms and legs and high between her thighs, into that pulsing, throbbing place that she’d been trying to ignore but felt heavy and flooded with heat. With longing.
She gasped at the startling way he brought her whole body to life, but he only deepened their kiss, as though seeking whatever she might be holding back from him. Chasing. Demanding.
Fliss had known she wasn’t his match financially or socially, but she had been pretending they were equals in a more esoteric way. Wit, perhaps. Or in their lighthearted detachment from this dinner of theirs.
This kiss, however. This kiss demonstrated just how far out of her league she really was. It was a plunge from thirty-thousand feet into thin air. It knocked the breath from her lungs, leaving her ears rushing with nothing but the scream of wind.
His lips raked across hers in an unbridled claim that shook apart all she’d ever known about kissing, which was admittedly a lot less than she’d realized. He cupped the back of her head, and the stubble on his jaw grazed her chin.
When a whimper resounded in her throat, he drew her upright, but desperation had her winding her arms around his neck. Don’t stop. She stood on tiptoe and pressed herself harder to him. She wanted to be closer. Closer still.
He growled and crushed her to his front and nipped at her bottom lip before soothing and suckling, causing more lightning to strike through her abdomen and into her sex. More trickles of need and more shivers of ecstatic pleasure traveled down her spine.
Very dimly, she was aware that they were in public, that they should stop, but she couldn’t make herself pull away. She tasted wine and traces of clove and inhaled a fading aftershave that would remain imprinted on her senses forever.
Her eyelids had fluttered closed. All that existed was this dark enveloping sense of the world having fallen away. She knew only distant sensations of satin and embroidered wool. Her fingertips found the line where his cool hair cut a precise line against the hot skin at the back of his neck. She was aware of her breasts being crushed against the plane of his chest in a way that was a relief but increased the yearning within her. His hard thighs warmed the fall of her skirt against the front of her legs, and his hand drew a slow, lazy circle in her lower back that was as promising as it was proprietary.
This was what she had been waiting for in her ambivalence toward dating. Not commitment or Mr. Right but this rush of desire that pulsed inside her like a drum beat. Like an imperative.
She had been waiting for a man to kiss her as though she was essential to him. That was how she felt when he started to draw back, then returned as though he couldn’t resist one more long, thorough, greedy taste.
He lifted his head and kept her in the shelter of his arms.
She was trembling and grateful for his support. Her knees were gelatin, the rest of her soft as melted wax. His hand was tucked beneath her hair, cupping the back of her neck, thumb moving in a restless, soothing caress against her nape. The other held her body pressed close enough to feel the rapid tattoo of his heart through the layer of his jacket and the thick shape of his erection against her stomach.
They were drawing attention. She covered her burning lips with her crooked finger.
When she stepped out of his arms, he slid his hand down her bare shoulder, leaving a wake of tingles before he buttoned his jacket to disguise the effect she’d had on him.
As they arrived back at their table, he picked up her handbag. “Do you want to stay for dessert or bring it to my room?”
“I—”
Don’t, she warned herself.
But that deep, inner, intuitive voice said, He’s the one.
Her voice was thick as honey. “I’m sure the staff won’t let it go to waste if we skip it.”
Rather than the smug smile she’d expected, his cheek ticked. He took her hand as they left the restaurant.
CHAPTER THREE
MOST PEOPLE ASSUMED Saint was a risk junkie. Or at the very least, someone who didn’t care about risks so long as he got what he wanted.
That wasn’t true at all. As a child, he had learned to calculate risk very quickly. If he’d wanted to speak to his father, he’d first weighed whether the subject was worth his father’s wrath at having his work interrupted. If he’d tried out for the school play, would it be worth his mother showing up tipsy and making it about her?
Later, when he and his father had found common ground in programming and hardware, his mother had been hurt and jealous. Which would he rather endure? His mother’s heartbreak or his father’s belittling lecture?
Those early consequences had prepared him for the perils in later relationships: the friend who was only a friend because he wanted access to the newest smart phone, or the girl who liked his money more than she liked him, or the people who invited him to parties to elevate their own social standing.
Saint was always aware when people were trying to use him. He often allowed it. There were silver linings: business advantages, amusing entertainments. Sex.
But he had taught those around him to expect very little from him beyond a sarcastic remark and that he would pick up the bill.
This woman beside him in the elevator, with her quirky sense of humor and understated beauty and fiery depths of passion, felt like a gamble he ought to take more time to calculate. His reaction to her was too sharp. Too intense. That kiss had been so hot, so all encompassing, he’d been seared from hairline to toenails.
This wasn’t purely a carnal reaction, though. That was the part making his nerve endings sting with danger. He’d been drawn to her all night—from the first glimpse to his compulsion to leave the gala with her. To learn more about her. To touch her.
She was as puzzling as she was alluring. Both open and closed. That air of mystery, with her refusing to give him her full name, tickled at his well-strung trip wires, but what damage could she possibly do to him if they spent the night together? He didn’t have anything in his room that he wasn’t prepared to lose. He weathered bad publicity like a seasonal storm.
Hell, he was in a small storm right now, he recalled with annoyance, but that fiasco with Julie reminded him to make clear to Fliss that this evening had its limits.
“I’m due in New York first thing in the morning,” he said. “I’ll be leaving for the airport in a few hours, but stay the night. Use the room tomorrow if you want. Visit the spa.”
The gold in her irises tarnished slightly before she blinked it away. “I have to work tomorrow.” Her mouth twitched. “But you’ve very good at this. Very smooth.” She looked down to where she held her purse and gave its clasp a few nervous clicks. “I’ve always wondered how these things were handled. By that I mean, um, I don’t have condoms.” She peeked up at him in question.
“I do.” Always. There was one in his pocket that he’d pulled from his stash out of habit.
Fliss nodded, but her brows pulled into a frown of consternation.
